


made for you

by SinginInTheRaine



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Best Friends, Comfort, Dinner, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Missing Scene, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, POV Natasha Romanov, Pre-Relationship, Protective Steve Rogers, five year time gap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-05-29 16:29:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19404130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinginInTheRaine/pseuds/SinginInTheRaine
Summary: Natasha has never felt so alone. But then he's there, and so is dinner.





	made for you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [APgeeksout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/gifts).



> APgeeksout, you seriously had like 100 prompts I wanted to write, but the idea of Steve making Nat dinner hit me right in the feels, so here we are. It's a little more on the angsty side than I had envisioned but I hope you enjoy!

Natasha took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. She felt the all-too-familiar pinpricks in the corner of her eyes, and she had to swallow a few times to rid herself of the lump in her throat that always seemed to be there. She still wasn’t used to being this person, but if she had once thought it would get easier to put what had happened behind her, she had been wrong.

Once upon a time, she would never have dared to cry over anything, unless she was faking it to elicit sympathy from a mark. Once upon a time, she had thought any real emotion she might have had had been disciplined out of her long before. But the little girl who thought crying was only for babies, and the woman who thought things were better when you cared about nothing, had both disappeared ages ago, although there had been moments lately that Natasha thought it might have been nice not to care so much.

Now, though, it was hard to remember when things didn’t hurt, when she didn’t care. She could barely remember before SHIELD, before the Avengers. It was hard enough remembering before the Snap, except she could feel them, feel all of them, every single second of the day. Sometimes she felt like their ghosts were here, in the Avengers Compound, haunting the halls, reminding her of how much she failed when Thanos got the stones, how much she failed again when he destroyed the stones before those who were left could reverse what had happened. She felt them watching her, judging her, questioning why she got to live, when she had done so much wrong, and they didn’t.

She took another deep breath. The call with everyone had gone well — even Carol had been around this time — but no one needed her. She had watched the news but nothing suspicious had been happening. She listed to the comms but there was silence. The weight of needing to be better, to save something, pressed down upon her. She had to fix what she could to make up for failing the rest of them.

But sometimes she wasn’t sure how, and today was one of those times. A tear escaped from the corner of her eye and made its way down her cheek. She didn’t bother to wipe it away. No one else would see. No one else was here. The people on the call were gone, and now it was just her and an empty building that everyone else had abandoned a long time ago. They had all told her she, too, should leave, but where was she supposed to go? None of them could tell her that.

Another tear escaped from her eye, and then another, and then another, until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She pressed her fist to her mouth to keep the sobs at bay and managed to make it from her office to the bathroom before sinking on to her knees on the floor. 

She lay there, on the cold tile, her cheek pressed to the floor, trying to ground herself for what seemed like seconds or maybe hours. She didn’t know. 

She heard the footsteps when they were much too close to her, but she didn’t have the energy to move or fight. The bathroom door creaked open, and she recognized the smell of him immediately — that sweet, musky scent that always made her smile.

She lifted her head, and he looked down at her with sad, pitying eyes, and she hated herself for becoming this person, but when he reached down to tug her to a sitting position and then to her feet, she went with him.

“Hi,” she said, a little shakily, when she was standing in front of him.

He didn’t answer, just pulled her into those strong, warm arms of his, one hand rubbing her back and the other in her hair, and he felt so comforting and so safe, the way he always had before everything went to hell, and she couldn’t take it anymore. The sobs came pouring out, and he just held her as she cried.

Finally, she sucked in a mouthful of air and stepped back, breaking Steve’s hold on her. Her cheeks felt warm — even after everything that had happened between the two of them, everything they had been through, she still wasn’t entirely comfortable letting him see her like this. She still wasn’t entirely comfortable letting her see herself like this.

“Hi,” she said again, and this time she forced herself to smile. “What are you doing here?” 

“I came to see my friend,” he said. “I thought you could use a real dinner.”

She tried to think back to the last time she’d had anything to eat but came up short. She would never tell Steve that, though.

“I had a real dinner,” she said.

“A peanut butter sandwich is not a real dinner, Natasha. How many times do I have to tell you that? You’re not five.”

“I never had peanut butter sandwiches when I was five,” she told him seriously, and he shook his head, and she almost thought he rolled his eyes a little before he wrapped an arm around her and lead her out of the bathroom and down the hall to the kitchen.

“Well, I think you’ve eaten more than enough to make up for that,” he told her as they walked, and she couldn’t help but to lean into him a little.

She came to a halt when they entered the kitchen. Steve had already started laying out the ingredients for dinner — ingredients that she recognized from the one other time he had made her dinner, on her birthday the prior year. 

She stared at him. “That’s your mom’s spaghetti recipe,” she said.

“It is,” he told her. “Nothing but the best for my girl.” He pointed to a chair he had moved next to the counter. “Sit,” he told her. “And no more peanut butter until tomorrow.”

She couldn’t help the smirk that crossed her face. “Even as a midnight snack?” 

He glared at her, and she almost laughed as she slid into the chair he pointed to.

She watched him as he shaped the meatballs and rolled them in a layer of breadcrumbs and then chopped tomatoes and peppers and carrots for the salad. Finally, he poured her a glass of wine from a bottle he had brought with him and placed it in front of her.

“I’m worried about you,” he told her, and she took a sip of the wine so she didn’t have to answer.

“Natasha …”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

“No one is,” she said, and that was probably the most truthful thing she had said since Steve had arrived.

He dished her up a large portion of the spaghetti and the meatballs and put the salad into a small bowl for her, placing it all in front of her and handing her a fork.

“I’m still worried about you.”

“I know.” The corner of her lip turned up in a wry sort of smile. “Sometime I’m worried about me, too,” she admitted, and then, because she might as well keep going with this whole honestly thing, “But I like when you’re here.”

“I like when I’m here, too,” Steve said, and then, as if he thought she wasn’t going to understand, adding, “With you.”

He reached out a hand to her, and she took it, letting his fingers wrap around hers. She wanted to ask him to stay with her for the night, maybe for more than a night. She wanted to ask him to hold her again, to let her lie in his arms all night. She wanted to ask him to help her forget for just a few hours. She wanted to kiss him and stroke his hair and feel him inside her.

Instead, she just said, “Thank you. For this.” and smiled at him, a real smile, the kind that only ever seemed to appear when he was around, but she wasn’t sure if he knew that.

He beamed back at her. “I’m glad you like it.”

She took another sip of her wine. Maybe she would ask him all of that later. Maybe she would keep it to herself a while longer. She knew at some point that she and Steve were going to have to talk about what was happening — or not happening — between them, but for now he was here, and she wasn’t alone, and that was enough for right now.


End file.
